Social Innovation Community (SIC)

A range of social innovation organisations and networks have emerged in Europe in recent years to tackle the increasingly complex and interrelated challenges we face today. Yet too often this activity is limited to a small but active few, and is not well-coordinated or visible enough to achieve critical mass.

How does it work?

Taking areas of known social innovation activity – which we’ve organised around ‘social innovation networks’ – SIC will strengthen, connect and grow existing social innovation communities – including public sector innovation, digital social innovation, intermediaries, social economy actors and more.

Starting from the premise that we need more open innovation approaches to effectively address societal challenges, over a three year period, SIC will run a series of on- and offline activities – including practical place-based experiments, learning, policy and research.

What will it do?

The aim is to:

1) help deepen the knowledge and capacity of the networks to act and grow, and

2) support public decision-makers and other stakeholders to work with social innovators more effectively in solving public challenges.

SIC is a Horizon 2020 Programme funded project, and run by a consortium of 12 leading organisations across Europe. SIC will run from February 2016- 2019.